IP in the Digital Age

February 20, 2017 @ 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

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The Digital Engineering & Test Centre (DETC) is tasked with bringing gaming and other capabilities from the digital world into the UK automotive sector, to improve automotive’s global competitiveness and to help solve some of the challenges facing automotive including real-world emissions, flexible manufacturing, and the testing of increasingly complex safety-critical vehicle systems.

Gaming, in particular, has far shorter design and product life-cycles compared to traditional engineering industries such as automotive, and this rapid speed of development, exploitation and obsolescence has seen them develop and adopt different approaches to intellectual property (IP) ownership rights and exploitation.

There is clearly a gap in practices between the well-established automotive and these newer, more fleet-of-foot, business sectors in terms of how IP should be handled and on the associated subjects of contracts and supplier relationships. This workshop will help the digital and automotive worlds better understand each other’s points of view and look into how emergent technologies, such as blockchain, must be embraced to help UK automotive reap the benefits of fast transactions, lower costs (and less obstructive) ways of handling IP with these new supply-chain entrants.

Objectives

For both sectors present (UK automotive and UK digital/gaming) to understand the current IP models used on both sides, where those models work add value and where they could add value.

To look into how newer IP and contractual models might work for both sectors, how to remove the barriers to adoption, and which tools might help in that regard

Review the emergent trends of blockchain, related tools, and X-as-a-service business model.

To help establish links between UK digital SMEs, UK automotive, and UK academia for future collaborative research and work in this area